We've had some questions about which mail servers work best with Conversant. We can't actually answer that question, as we don't know which is best (we haven't tried them all). This page tells you what we (Macrobyte and some of our customers) have used.

If you want specific information about setting up any of these mail servers to work with your Conversant server, or would like help setting up a different mail server for use with Conversant, please post a reply to this message.

Macrobyte's Original Setup

Originally (Autumn, 1999 - Summer, 2002), Macrobyte used Eudora Internet Mail Server (EIMS), LetterRip Pro, and Frontier, on separate MacOS 9 machines.

• EIMS provided the POP accounts and SMTP server for Conversant.

• LetterRip provided the mailing-list services. When a conversation was created on any of our Conversant servers, a new list would automatically be created in LetterRip. When someone subscribed to a conversation's email interface, the address would automatically be added to LetterRip's list.

• Communication was handled between the Conversant, EIMS, and LetterRip servers via XML-RPC. Frontier was installed on both the EIMS and LetterRip servers to receive the XML-RPC commands and convert them into appleevents for controlling EIMS and LetterRip.

This setup worked very well for two-and-a-half years, and did a nice job of distributing server tasks between multiple machines.

Macrobyte's Current Setup

This summer, we moved both the list and mail servers to a single Mac OS X box, running non-GUI server applications. Exim is our SMTP (and mail list) server, and UW IMAP provides the POP services.

This new setup is extremely flexible and far less of a resource drain than the old. Performance is improved (messages sent to/from Conversant are delivered more quickly), and the mail server is much more secure (no longer an open relay). It's also easier to manage, with everything on a single machine and available via telnet/ssh.

Other Setups

Macrobyte's clients use a variety of systems, including:

• some very similar to what's been describe above
• CommunigatePro (MacOS X or Windows)
• Rockliffe MailSite (Windows)
• and others...

If you're interested in running Conversant along side these or any other mail servers, please let us know how we can help.